28 May 2009

The Commitment to Development Index doesn't get nearly enough attention.

In last year's Commitment to Development Index from CGD, Britain came out 6th overall. Pretty good, but it isn't all rosy when you disaggregate the scores. Good on aid, investment, environment and security, but not so good on trade, migration and technology. We do particularly badly on migration and technology (17th out of 22).

The bad migration score is understandable, for normative and positive reasons. Migration is a big political issue in the UK, and is pretty unpopular. Also the UK is actually genuinely a relatively densely populated country. Although I would argue for higher immigration to the UK, other more land abundant places should be taking even more.

On technology we have no excuse. There are 2 main components of the technology score - government spending on research and development (we rank 13th) and protection of Intellectual Property Rights (We rank 19th).

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"Because the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else." (Lucas 1988, On the Mechanics of Economic Development)

"The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it" (Marx 1888)

Roving Bandit is a reference to Mancur Olson, not because I think I'm some kind of badass.

"represent the material embodiment of market discourses that run through the capillary structures of orgs that conform contemporary neoliberal ed policy" -- Education International